讲解

Today’s key word is royalty
royalty 版税 除了版税royalty 也有皇家，皇室的意思。
Royalties are payments made to authors（作者） and musicians（音乐人）when their work is sold or performed .They usually receive a fixed percentage of the profits（利润） from these sales or performances.

Here are 2 examples.

royalty 皇室

The gala evening was attended by royalty and politicians.
王室成员和政坛要人参加了这个晚会。

royalty 版税

The writer gets a 10% royalty on each copy of his book.
作者从每本卖出的书中可得到百分之十的版税.

Today we are going to talk about royalty as 版税。

话说，这首歌在地球上基本上是无人不知，无人不晓。最近它因为版权问题登上了新闻头条。是怎么回事呢？且听我慢慢分解。

传说，在1893年，一对姐妹创作了这首歌的歌词。The melody（旋律） of "Happy Birthday to You" actually comes from the song "Good Morning to All".

这首歌的歌词本来是用于课堂问候，歌名叫做《祝大家早安》.这对姐妹觉得good morning to all旋律简单上口，改个词顺便就祝人生日快乐了。

就这样，这首歌慢慢流行开来，但刚开始并没有人考虑版权这件事儿，直到有一天，One day, The Summy Company registered for copyright in 1935. In 1988, Warner/Chappell Music purchased the company owning the copyright for $25 million。其中《祝你生日快乐》的价值被估作500万美元。有人估计, the song is the highest earning single song in history, with an estimated earnings of $50 million.

然而，然而，关键来了就在本周，一位人见人爱，花见花开，车见车爆胎的美国法官，（必须重点表扬一下这位法官），他说，华纳啊，(参照海燕呐！)《生日快乐歌》的有效版权不是你滴啊！

The judge has ruled that Warner/Chappell never had the right to charge for the use of the "Happy Birthday To You" song.（鼓掌！！！）

那这位法官是怎么注意到这件事的呢，不久前，有两名美国制片人计划拍摄一部《生日快乐歌》的纪录片，华纳公司知道了就说，你得给我钱啊，1500美元版权使用费。这俩小哥表示，为啥啊，这不科学啊，于是就上法庭了。

于是，"'Happy Birthday' is finally free after 80 years,"。偷偷摸摸唱了那么多年的生日快乐歌，终于可以正大光明的合法的唱了。来，大家一起啊，Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you ,happy birthday my dear listeners, happy birthday to you~~~~